The advent of the Internet has made protection of intellectual property a priority for software and digital media providers. As bandwidth has become more plentiful, the Internet has been used for unauthorized downloading of music, movies and pirated copies of software. This misuse has led to loss of revenues for software and media producers.
Similar distribution challenges are associated with delivery of classified and confidential information. Organizations may wish to limit activities that employees can perform using confidential documents and applications.
To mitigate unauthorized downloading and copying of the digital assets, some methods and systems for protecting digital assets have emerged. Available methods and systems include encryption infrastructure solutions, viewer lockup solutions, and Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions.
Encryption infrastructure solutions typically require a corresponding proprietary plug-in for each application, including databases and file systems, to guarantee enforcement. Thus, an end user may be required to install multiple proprietary plug-ins in his/her computer to handle multiple applications. Encryption infrastructure solutions typically use a public key infrastructure (PKI) to manage public keys for encryption. Encryption infrastructure solutions are relatively difficult and expensive to deploy and maintain.
Viewer lockup solutions use a plug-in to lock information in a viewer program. For each viewer program that is to display or otherwise output digital assets, a corresponding plug-in is required. Thus, an end user may need multiple viewer lockup solutions in his/her computer to handle multiple viewer programs.
DRM solutions, which are usually embedded in an application or are otherwise application-specific, enable an administrator to regulate downloads and usage of digital assets. Existing standards to support digital rights include extensible rights markup language (XrML) and open digital rights language (ODRL). However, implementations based on existing standards are usually proprietary.
Online distributors of computer gaming software may attempt to make copying and reuse of their software difficult by decomposing the software into components. This approach may be undesirably expensive and limiting to an inventory of products.
In some broadcasting applications, owners' rights are preserved in hardware that may contain a proprietary scrambling algorithm. In this case, users who wish to receive the broadcasts may be required to buy or otherwise acquire receivers produced by a certain hardware maker. This limits consumer choices and availability of services.
Shortcomings of the aforementioned methods and systems include their limitation to a particular application or a particular type of digital asset, their being too invasive by requiring a user to install or configure a client program to enforce the protection of the digital assets, and/or their being excessively complex to provide a reliable solution. Further, the client program to enforce the protection of the digital assets may not be successful because this enforcement is more important to enforcers than end users. Still further, many digital rights enforcement systems are resource-intensive and costly.